IRAK: Oil From Mosul

Oil flowed officially last week out of the Mosul province of Irak, out of a
35-year welter of some of the world's most intricate connivance and
double-cross.

It was 1900 when a Briton discovered oil in Mosul (whence the word
muslin), not far from the legendary site of the Garden of Eden, in the
shadow of Mesopotamia's Kurdish Hills. Then the slippery Sultans of
Turkey ruled, as Arab provinces, what is now Irak. The European oil
companies were so greedy to get the Sultan's oil that they checkmated
one another's efforts until June...